#JogosIndigenas

The World Indigenous Games went down last week in Palmas, Tocatins, a landlocked state in the middle of Brazil’s agro-business heartland.

Brazil’s Ministry of Sports hosted the event with the UN Development Program (UNDP), bringing together 24 tribes from Brazil and as far as Canada, Lapland, Mongolia and New Zealand to compete in sixteen events from running and swimming to archery and tug-of-war. I flew to the games to visit my dear friend Temryss Xeli’tia Lane, from Lummi Nation, a UCLA grad student in American Indian Studies researching Indigenous futebol, Nike N7 Ambassador, and member of the American delegation in Palmas.

Widely criticized by Brazilian tribes as a strategically-timed photo-op, the World Indigenous Games attracted journalists from 21 countries who were more interested in photographing Indigenous people slinging arrows and rowing canoes than reporting on the big issues currently affecting Brazil’s Indigenous groups.

The biggest issue is PEC 215, a bill Brazil’s Congress passed during the World Indigenous Games that would strip power to determine Indigenous land territory lines from Brazil’s FUNAI foundation to protect Indigenous groups, and put it in the hands of Congress. The bill, which now goes to the Senate, would effectively overwrite Brazilian Indigenous groups’ constitutional right to their land.

“While Brazil plays with agro-business and promotes games “for gringos to watch”, our lands are are having their boundary marking processes revised, reduced or suspended by the government,” said an open letter from the local guaranis-Kaiowás tribe, which boycotted the games in protest. “The only game that we want to play is to recover our lands.”

Protests outside the arena about all kinds of issues the organizers didn’t want to deal with. To repeat a few:

PEC 215, a bill Brazil’s Congress passed during the World Indigenous Games that would strip power to determine Indigenous land territory lines from Brazil’s FUNAI foundation to protect Indigenous groups, and put it in the hands of Congress. The bill, which now goes to the Senate, would effectively overwrite Brazilian Indigenous groups’ constitutional right to their land.

After Indigenous Brazilians protested PEC 215 during the opening night ceremony, the organizers beefed up security to keep it from happening again inside the arena. A missed opportunity for a historically marginalized and diverse group of people to say what matters to them and be heard in front of 300 journalists from some twenty countries.